The cloud layers above the city moved as they always had.Wind speed steady. Trajectories predictable.
But in ARC's backend, when the Black Ledger turned to a new page, a column appeared that had never existed before.
Trend Assessment: InitiatedConsistency Index: 96.8% → 96.1% (continuing decline)Stability: Green → Yellow (edge state)Note: Misalignment no longer confined to a single source. Expansion detected.
No alarms were triggered.No warning indicators lit up.
The system merely accepted the new column, quietly, as if acknowledging a fact rather than announcing a failure.
This was no longer a recoverable anomaly.It was a condition in motion.
The models hesitated.
The existing classification framework was no longer sufficient to contain what was coming.
At a lake outside the city, afternoon sunlight lay thick across the water.
Yet a section of the surface appeared too dark.
The darkness did not belong to any known water phenomenon.It was as if brightness itself had been carved out, leaving a clean-edged absence with no gradient.
When water birds flew overhead, they abruptly altered course, avoiding the area instinctively, as though steering around a space that should not exist.
Minutes later, the darkness faded on its own.The lake returned to normal.
But symmetry did not fully recover.
The reflection along the left shore lagged a fraction of a second behind the right before realigning with the physical form.
A deep monitoring node registered an anomalous signal.
It was not equipment noise.Not external interference.
It felt more like the background itself had been gently pulled once, leaving behind a residual echo.
The frequency was extremely low.The intensity insufficient to trigger any alert mechanism.
Yet it was real.
The system could not assign it a classification.It was provisionally marked as:
A perceived unknown.
Not yet formed.No longer ignorable.
That afternoon, Jeff returned to his apartment.
As he reached the entrance of the building, he stopped.
Not from fatigue.Not from remembering something.
He simply felt it.
The surrounding space had responded to his presence.
Not through visible change, but through a subtle positional adjustment.
As if the world, very slightly, had begun to account for him.